Looking Back at the Victoria Royals WHL Bantam Draft History: 2011

It’s been a week since the 2017 WHL Bantam Draft which saw the Royals take 12 players over 12 rounds. The future success of these 15-year-old players is unknown, and it really is a crapshoot if a player picked in the first round or the eleventh round will ever play a game in the WHL.

When looking at the most recent Bantam Draft, it got me thinking about the success of the draft picks under General Manager Cameron Hope since the Royals moved to Victoria from Chilliwack in 2011. What percentage of his picks turned into WHL players and who were, in hindsight, the better players left on the table? Let’s take a look.

*For the “Players they could have had”, I will look for the best players picked after the player in the same round, with the same position taking precedence. If not, then best player, like you’ll see in the first player below:

It wasn’t the most successful draft that Hope had as General Manager of the Victoria Royals, and there were a lot of bonafide WHLers that went a pick or two after their own. Besides Joe Hicketts, who was the best choice in the first round for the Royals, of course. Dysin Mayo was picked two picks after Michael Bell in the 3rd round. Bell no longer plays hockey and Mayo is an NHL Draft pick. Ryan Gagnon, the reigning captain of the Royals was a solid player for Victoria so there isn’t a lot of regret with him.

Chris Wilkie, the lone NHL Draft pick of the Bantam Draft, never played a game in the Western Hockey League, but Nelson Nogier played 235 games for Saskatoon and Red Deer before being drafted in the 4th round in the 2014 NHL Draft by Winnipeg. Nogier went 4 picks after Wilkie in the 2011 Bantam Draft.

Tyler Wong, Steven Owre and Jesse Shynkaruk each went a pick (or 6 in Owre’s case) after the Royals chose a guy who would never go on to play in the WHL. They all played over 250 games in the WHL, and Wong and Owre scored 298 and 221 points in their careers respectively.

On the defense side, the Royals were only a few picks away from selecting both Travis Sanheim and Brandon Carlo in the 8th and 10th rounds, which would have solidified their defense for a few years.

Obviously, drafting 15-year-olds isn’t a set science. These kids still haven’t hit their growth spurts in a lot of cases and it’s difficult to know who will blossom in their environments and who won’t, but it’s just interesting to see what could have been. Even at this stage of the game, the WHL

Even at this stage of the game, the WHL Bantam Drafts are very important to a team’s future, drafting 15-year-olds who will be leaving your team, at the best case scenario, as 20-year-olds. The Royals got a few players who helped the club tremendously, but if only they knew how some of these other guys would turn out.